New ETFs: Christening a Sinking Ship

The latest trend in emerging-market exchange-traded funds is to leave out the biggest countries. But the focus should be on companies, not countries.

What was once a brilliant marketing concept has collapsed like a ton of bricks.

That would be the BRICs, of course, the term for Brazil, Russia, India, and China coined by Goldman Sachs' Jim O'Neill in 2001. Once a favorite of investors, it's now so far out of favor that the latest trend seems to be excluding them from new emerging-market exchange-traded funds. But that ship has already sailed.